


Earning back trust, one day at a time

by logopheliac



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 221b, Busking, Domestic, Gen, Money, kinkmeme fill, past drug abuse, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-17
Updated: 2013-11-17
Packaged: 2018-01-01 19:27:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1047696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/logopheliac/pseuds/logopheliac
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>About a month after John moves into 221B, rent is due. John has no problems with this, but Sherlock finds himself broke, and unwilling to call on Mycroft for help. (hint look at the tags this is a fic about busking and not prostitution)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Earning back trust, one day at a time

**Author's Note:**

> Notes:  
> It's probably out of canon for John to be concerned about dismantling the patriarchy but it's very canon for Sherlock to insult men with reference to their intelligence, but insult women with reference to their sexuality, and that pisses me off so yeah. Feminist!John.  
> Also, pun absofuckinglutely intended in the title.

John has been living with Sherlock for nearly two months now. After the whirlwind that was a Study in Pink, life at 221B's been surprisingly – normal. Wednesday through Sunday, he wakes up at 6am, has his tea and toast, and is at the clinic by 7:30, and home around 6pm, where it's dinner, bit of telly or a novel and a pint, and bed by 10. His days off are spent walking through London, writing, and more often than not, searching through his old medical school textbooks for an obscure fact that Sherlock has decided is absolutely crucial.  
  
Sherlock's eating, sleeping, and working habits are far from as predictable as John's, and John supposes he could join Sherlock in his madness – a surgeon's steady hand would certainly improve some of the scientific experiments, if the acid burns that accumulate weekly on the kitchen table are any indication – but John is, in the end, a soldier. He likes his carefully regimented life, wherein each of his actions is done with meaning and purpose. He thinks that might have been the worst of the time before Sherlock. Always being short on money was bad, and the loneliness was worse, but the lack of purpose, god it was like living in a void, that was worst of all. So if John's stopped thinking of his life as before-the-war and after-the-war, and starting to think of his life as before-Sherlock and after-Sherlock, well, he doesn't think too much into it.  
  
Most days, John walks to and from his work. It's only a few kilometers, and although his bank account is slowly growing with the aid of a steady income and the Army pension, he stills saves money where he can. There's a rhythm to his life at 221B, yes, but there was a rhythm to his life in the army and – well, just because things are going well today, doesn't mean they'll be going well tomorrow. All good things must come to an end and if that end is sooner than he'd like, well, it's better to be prepared.  
  
But today, the last day of February, all day John's been seeing children with runny noses and fevers, the latest influenza, no doubt, and then he ends up staying late to help Sarah care for a pregnant woman who slid on ice and took a nasty fall. By the time he gets out of the office, the London streets are dark as sin and cold as a witch's tit and John is _tired_. So, fuck it, yesterday he paid Ms. Hudson his half of the rent and utilities for March and his bank account's still far from empty, he can indulge and take the tube.  
  
John ducks into the station located at the corner of the street, appreciative of the warmth although it was hardly a minute's walk from the clinic. He swipes his Oystercard, the train arrives on time, the whole thing is simple and uneventful. But, it seems, that John's life is destined to never be just simple and uneventful because as he gets off the train at Jubilee station, he hears quite distinctly the third movement of Bach's Partita no. 3 for solo violin.  
  
John does not like music very much. It's not that he _doesn't_ care for it – he will listen happily to whatever's playing on the radio at work, and often puts on a Bond film soundtrack when he's writing his blog. It's just, he's not mad about it. He owns a total of four CDs, thinks the cost of concert tickets is absurd, and couldn't tell you the name of the conductor of the London Philharmonic if his life depended on it. The only reason John immediately recognizes the series of notes that cut through the hum of the commuters' conversations is because, yesterday evening, Sherlock deemed it imperative to play through Bach's third Partita, again and again and again, until John finally put in a pair of earplugs and fell asleep. John is quite certain that those particular examples of Bach's genius, as performed by a man who really needed to put down the damn fiddle and eat something, when was the last time he ate, see, he didn't even remember, will be imprinted in his memory until the day he dies.  
Unlike Sherlock or Bach, John is not a genius, but he doesn't need to be a genius to deduce who's playing the violin before he even steps off the train. His deduction is proven correct, as he exits the station and sees a tall, thin man wearing skinny jeans, converses, and a baggy Oxford hoodie playing violin with the instrument's case, open and littered with coins and bills, at his feet. Sherlock, wearing disguise no. 34: the graduate student.  
  
John isn't surprised to see Sherlock, but he is surprised that Sherlock is here, in public (albeit in disguised) playing the violin. John had, somehow, gotten the impression that the violin was a bit of a more, well, private thing. Something Sherlock didn't show off, John thinks, the way he did with his deductions or, let's face it, dashing complexion and cheekbones.  
  
John waits by the exit of the tube station until Sherlock concludes the third movement, earning an elderly couple's applause and two quid. Then John approaches his flatmate.  
  
“Hello, John,” Sherlock says out of the corner of his mouth, slowly plucking a Russian folk tune on the fiddle. “Didn't expect to see you here.”  
“Same to you. What's this about then? On a stakeout?”  
“Nothing so interesting, I'm afraid.”  
“You going to be out here much longer? It's bloody cold.”  
“Yes,” Sherlock drawls. “Yes, it is cold, well done.” And John thinks that there is a tone of bitterness in Sherlock's reply that has nothing whatsoever to do with John stating the obvious.  
“Well come on then, let's go home, have a nice cuppa tea.”  
Sherlock scowls at the change in his violin case. “Normally I would resent and ignore your camellia-based hegemony, but seeing as the general populace of London shows no hope whatsoever of appreciating Bach – very well. Home.”

  


He swiftly packs up his violin, the movements not unlike those of assembling a rifle, John thinks, and they walk the short distance back to the flat in silence. When they get in, Sherlock throws his coat on the floor and himself on the sofa, knees curled to chest in classic brooding position. John hangs up both his and Sherlock's coats in the closet, and puts the kettle on.  
  
While the water heats, he sits in his armchair, opens his laptop, and, feigning disinterest, asks, “So, if it wasn't for a case or out of general public-spiritedness...?”  
“If you must know,” Sherlock says. “There has been a bit of a complication with, well...” He stretches out on the couch and waves his hand in the air limply.  
“A complication with...?”  
“Oh, well, it's all very boring and vulgar,” Sherlock says, with what John thinks of Sherlock's 'at home' accent slipping into the more marked, posh pronunciations that remind John (and the employees of Scotland Yard) of the unknown amounts of wealth his flatmate's family must posses.  
“I don't mind boring,” John says, checking his email. “Or vulgar.”  
“Well, as you know, there are certain rituals to which society forces its members to adhere. And it so happens that while money is merely a symbolic measurement of one's contributions to society, it is nevertheless, ah--”  
“Necessary?”  
“Yes. Precisely. And so even though I daily make invaluable contributions to both general and academic society, they still insist that I partake in their silly, symbolic rituals -- damn it all, John.” Sherlock says, dropping from the posh façade back to his normal accent. “Damn it and fuck it and damn it again. I'm broke as hell and it's all Mycroft's fault.”  
“Sorry – _you're_ broke? And this is because of Mycroft? But he, you, your family's loaded, innit?”  
“Yes, in fact, there's a very sizable trust sitting in the Bank of England that is legally _mine_ and I can't touch a goddamned cent of it because of my goddamned brother. And, as you may have noticed, rent is due tomorrow, Scotland Yard refuses to financially remunerate me for my services and Ms. Hudson's generosity only goes so far. Hence, busking.” Sherlock sighs, resignedly, and closes his eyes.  
  
John's pretty sure it was Sherlock who refused money from the police, claiming that crime solving was an art, and he an artist, not a cheap whore to be bought and sold, because John had made a mental note to talk to Sherlock about how it was 2012 for god's sake and if he had be insulting could he at least do so without also reinforcing the patriarchy. That conversation had yet to happen, but at this point in time, John is far more concerned with the possibility of his flatmate not making rent for March. He goes to the kitchen, pours himself a cup of tea, and returns to his armchair.  
“How much'd you get busking then?” he asks.  
“Eighty quid. For four hours.”  
“Eighty – well, that's not bad. Right. I'm sure we can find another six hundred pounds, no problem.” Suddenly John's wishing he hadn't taken the train home. “Any chance you could borrow off Mycroft?”  
“No.”  
“Maybe you could, erm, talk him into letting you get at your money, from the trust?”  
“I was hoping to avoid this.”  
“Yeah, well, I'd like to avoid being evicted, so if you don't phone him, I will.”  
  
Twenty minutes later a sleek black car pulls up outside of 221B.  
John answers the door.  
“John. How lovely to see you again.” the man in the dark suit says.  
“Sure, come in. Care for a cup of tea?”  
“No thank you; I shall only be a moment, I hope?” he directs this last statement to Sherlock, who still lies prone on the sofa.  
“Yes, get on with it.” Sherlock sighs.  
  
John pours himself another cup of tea and returns to his armchair, thanking his lucky stars that his sister was only an alcoholic with the emotional fortitude and long-term planning skills of a sponge cake (and there it is again, one of those little tells that show just how much living with Sherlock has skewed John's sense of normal, to consider Harry a blessing of a sister).  
  
Mycroft takes from his briefcase a sheet of crisp white paper and a pen. John can see that the paper is evidently some sort of form or contract, the majority of which – date, printed names, and such – Mycroft has already completed, perhaps on the way to their flat. Mycroft then hands Sherlock what John recognizes as a drug test. Sherlock skulks off to the loo, leaving John staring bemusedly at Mycroft.  
  
“So, ah, drugs?”  
“Sherlock didn't tell you? Oh, dear me, I thought you knew.”  
“He, er,” John thinks back to the 'surprise' drugs bust he witnessed his first night at 221B. “I mean, I thought maybe he had just tried something a bit not-legal once or twice, maybe. Or had gotten hold of something for, for an experiment! What's a genius like him need with drugs?”  
“That's the question I've been asking myself for years.” Mycroft replies.  
“Years? Jesus _fuck_! Sherlock! Sherlock, can you hear me? We are going to have a very serious talk about this--”  
“There's nothing to talk about,” Sherlock says. “See. I'm perfectly clean, just as I've been for the past year, _dear_ brother of mine.”  
“And I couldn't be more proud of you.” Mycroft signs the form with a flourish. “Another sixteen months and the trust is yours. Until then, please, don't wait until the last minute to call me if you run out of funds?”  
“Fuck off.”  
Mycroft smiles indulgently at his younger brother, then turns to John.  
“Mr. Watson. A pleasure, as always.”  
“Yeah. Uh. See you round, then.”  
  
The next day is Monday; John's got the day off from the clinic and when he wakes up to the sight of heavy snowflakes tumbling down outside, he couldn't be more grateful. Sherlock is sleeping on the sofa, next to a scrap of paper informing John that they would not be evicted as he had run out to the bank earlier in the morning, not that Ms. Hudson (misspelled, John noted, and added that to the list of things to address with Sherlock) would really evict them as... here Sherlock's scrawl became positively indecipherable; the pencil still clutched in his hand suggesting that it was here he had fallen asleep.  
John ruffled his flatmate's hair affectionately and pulled a blanket over him, then went to the kitchen to make some tea.  
It was going to be a nice, quiet day. Although, perhaps not so very quiet, John thought as he poured a cup of tea, humming softly to himself. He was starting to grow rather fond of that Bach piece. 


End file.
